(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The NY Times barely hints at the incoming House sh*t show [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-08 Kevin McCarthy, 'leader' of the January 6 party House majority being congratulated on his assumption of the post of figurehead front man for the Angry Children's Brigade. Headline the first: History suggests that the procedural plans of the new House Republican majority are likely to lead to more gridlock and legislative instability, not less. ...Now the new House Republican majority is proposing to make institutional changes of their own as part of a rules package Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with hard-right rebels in exchange for their support for his job. The handful of Republicans who are forcing the changes, which are scheduled to be considered on Monday, pointed to the rushed approval in December of a roughly $1.7 trillion spending bill to fund the entire government as an example of back-room legislating at its worst. ...But restoring any semblance of order and structure to the consideration of spending bills and other measures will prove to be extremely difficult with conservative Republicans in charge of the House and Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House. The new dynamic is more likely a prescription for shutdown and gridlock. The roots of dysfunction run deep. Ya think? Headline the second: Republicans plan to create a special subcommittee, led by a Trump ally, with a mandate to scrutinize open criminal investigations and classified intelligence. WASHINGTON — Newly empowered House Republicans are preparing a wide-ranging investigation into law enforcement and national security agencies, raising the prospect of politically charged fights with the Biden administration over access to sensitive information like highly classified intelligence and the details of continuing criminal inquiries by the Justice Department. The House plans to vote this week on a resolution to create a special Judiciary subcommittee on what it calls the “weaponization of the federal government,” a topic that Republicans have signaled could include reviewing investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. Translation: after four years of Trump screaming “Witch Hunt” every time things started to catch up with him and the truth threatened to come out, Republicans are now going to be flooding the zone with witch hunts of every kind to attack their enemies, to bring in donations from the suckers in their base, and to shield their own criminality. Speaking of weaponization… ...“We will hold the swamp accountable, from the withdrawal of Afghanistan, to the origins of Covid and to the weaponization of the F.B.I.,” Mr. McCarthy said in his first remarks as speaker early Saturday. “Let me be very clear: We will use the power of the purse and the power of the subpoena to get the job done.” The biggest problem facing Republicans: how many conspiracy theories to pursue — they have so many — and fighting over who gets the spotlight for the performances to come. Please don’t think I’m singling out The NY Times as particularly egregious. The Mainstream media has a chronic problem dealing with the bughouse insanity and open corruption of the G.O.P. I’m having a hard time remembering if any major editorial board at an major newspaper called upon Trump to resign at any point in his four-year crime spree, or if anyone on the 3 semi-legitimate networks said it was time for him to go. Assumed powerlessness seems to be the order of the day when confronting the neofascists and anarchists running loose under the Republican brand. Think how different things might have been if news story headlines had routinely started using the word “LIE” to describe statements coming from Trump — or McConnell, McCarthy, etc. etc. No, to get an accurate depiction of the people now in charge in the House, on the Supreme Court, and everywhere else Republicans are to be found, it’s necessary to go overseas. Hat tip to LaFeminista for picking up on an editorial at The Guardian by Will Hutton: America’s ‘Taliban 20’ Republicans have the same roots as our Brexit spartans Hutton discusses the politicians making a wreck of the U.K. and how much they have in common with their American counterparts. He brings up a concept — Loser’s consent — that seems to have disappeared on the right, if they ever had it. “Losers’ consent”, the doctrine under which, if you lose a free election, you accept the verdict of the voters, is rightly said to be a precondition for democracy. So is a broader willingness to accept other basic principles; democracy is not a process to give an ideological minority a clean sweep of everything through sheer bullying. There has to be compromise and acceptance that democratic politics is a constant argument; opponents are citizens, too, with valid interests and arguments. They have to be out-argued rather than treated as disposable scum. We seem to be suffering from a corollary to the idea that conservatism can never fail, as Digby put it — it can only be failed. That means the people trying to put conservative policies into practice with predictably disastrous results either weren’t ‘true’ conservatives, or they didn’t do it hard enough. To ad to that rationalizing, they’ve simplified it down to “We wuz robbed” when they lose elections, not that they failed to make a case to get enough votes to win. (The internal discord over McCarthy is driven in part by anger that they didn’t get their promised Red Wave, and they demanded a price.) What Hutton does that our legitimate media seems reluctant to do is look at them and see them clearly. ...The American Republican Taliban don’t care. Members of the Freedom Caucus may talk and look like other politicians, but the self-belief that they are absolutely correct – helped by the US’s industrial-scale rightwing media – has made them deranged. Government is a “swamp”; welfare undermines self-reliance, however acute individual need; tax is an infringement of personal liberty; might is right in interpersonal as in international affairs (so be suspicious of Zelenskiy and lean into Putin); global warming is a socialist conspiracy; abortion and gay marriage offend the Bible... ...Read the books and speeches by the intellectuals and politicians who have fuelled this craziness over the years – Ayn Rand, William Buckley Jr, Leo Strauss, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Novak, Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump himself – and terms such as justice, fairness, obligation, do-as-you-would-be-done-by, partnership, compassion and human rights are absent. Their lexicon is freedom, choice, “Make America Great Again”, “America First”, tax cut magic inducing wealth creation with nothing else contributing: their enemies are the deep state, immigration, anything “woke” and the state as swamp. The Republican Taliban do not want to govern; theirs is a performative politics to stop any one else from governing. Electing a puppet speaker, hostage to their ambition, is the precondition for their sabotage. You don’t need a mob to invade the Capitol to achieve your ends (none in the Freedom Caucus has condemned the events of 6 January) – your speaker will now do the job. emphasis added Read The Whole Thing. January 6 isn’t over — it’s just going ahead through other means. Lincoln contemplating the Republican Party of 2023 [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/8/2146157/-The-NY-Times-barely-hints-at-the-incoming-House-sh-t-show Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/